From rec.arts.sf-reviews Fri Aug 9 11:59:08 1991 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!know!cc.swarthmore.edu From: jhildeb1@cc.swarthmore.edu (Jeff Hildebrand) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-reviews Subject: Review of Kim Stanley Robinson's _Pacific Edge_ Message-ID: <31420@know.pws.bull.com> Date: 5 Aug 91 19:16:49 GMT Sender: news@pws.bulL.com Reply-To: jhildeb1@cc.swarthmore.edu Followup-To: rec.arts.sf-lovers Lines: 74 Approved: wex@pws.bull.com _Pacific Edge_ by Kim Stanley Robinson Review Copyright (c) 1991 by Jeff Hildebrand [Bibliographic info at end --AW] Read this book. The important matters taken care of, here are some details. Kim Stanley Robinson's Orange County Trilogy is a very unusual type of trilogy. The books do not depend on one another plot-wise. You can read each one separately, since Robinson has chosen to examine three different possible futures in the three books, all set in the same location around the same time. However the three work as a whole by offering countering futures, which highlight the values each future takes on. Having read Pacific Edge first I can confidently say that it stands on it's own in terms of plot of thematic development. The future Robinson explores here is that of an ectopia. There has been massive reforestation, pollution is way down, and prosperity is the norm. With a scenario like this you might expect an epic story, a wide ranging narrative giving the history that led to this condition or perhaps a rich description of wonders this world holds. Neither is the case. Instead the plot revolves around a community political intrigue, a love triangle or two, and the day to day life of a small number of people. It is the seemingly unambitious scope of this book that makes it succeed so brilliantly in the end. The residents of El Modena, California lead a quiet life in general. The government is a town council that runs its meetings in the style of Quaker public meetings. The main ongoing social event is the local slow pitch softball league. We are introduced to several of the people living in the town. The main character is Kevin Claiborne, a builder and member of the town council. Circulating around him are Romana Sanchez, who he falls head over heels in love with, Alfredo Blair, her ex-lover and town mayor, Tom Barnard, Kevin's grandfather, Oscar Baldarramma, the town lawyer, and several others. Robinson does a good job drawing the reader into the lives of these characters. Despite the lack of cosmic importance, we see that events which seem trivial to an outsider can be important to the people involved. Then once he has our attention, he surprises us by doing something more. Guided by a series of 50-year-old diary entries (which lead off every chapter) Robinson examines the concepts of utopia, showing that life will always go on and humans can get themselves into individual troubles, no matter how stable and prosperous the society. However it is the way the society around the troubled individuals reacts that really makes a utopia work. There is undoubtedly a political context to this story and it might be tempting, upon seeing the setup of the story as an ectopia, to dismiss Robinson as a dreaming eco-freak. This would be a great mistake because he combines an environmental world with praise of small town and family life that would seem to come straight from a Ronald Reagan campaign speech. (Although there are admittedly some differences in the family structure he outlines.) Incredibly, out of these seemingly paradoxically diverse elements he draws a convincing society. And a very thoughtful one which leaves a lot of interpretation open for the reader. No short review can do justice to the rich depth of this book. If you want wall to wall action and adventure, you won't find it here, but if you want a fascinating look at a possible future you will find it here. In comparison to the 1990 Nebula and Hugo nominees that I've read (_Tehanu_, _Fall of Hyperion_, _Earth_, _Queen of Angels_ and _The Vor Game_) _Pacific Edge_ stands up exceedingly well. In fact to my mind, it is a superior book. %A Robinson, Kim Stanley %T Pacific Edge %I Tor, A Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. Book %C New York %D November 1990 (hardback), June 1991 (paperback) %G ISBN 0-812-50056-3 %P 326 pp %S The Orange County Trilogy %V Volume 3 %O paperback $4.99 From rec.arts.sf-reviews Fri Aug 9 11:59:12 1991 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!news.funet.fi!fuug!mcsun!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!know!cc.swarthmore.edu From: jhildeb1@cc.swarthmore.edu (Jeff Hildebrand) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-reviews Subject: Review of Kim Stanley Robinson's _Pacific Edge_ Message-ID: <31421@know.pws.bull.com> Date: 5 Aug 91 19:16:49 GMT Sender: news@pws.bulL.com Reply-To: jhildeb1@cc.swarthmore.edu Followup-To: rec.arts.sf-lovers Lines: 74 Approved: wex@pws.bull.com _Pacific Edge_ by Kim Stanley Robinson Review Copyright (c) 1991 by Jeff Hildebrand [Bibliographic info at end --AW] Read this book. The important matters taken care of, here are some details. Kim Stanley Robinson's Orange County Trilogy is a very unusual type of trilogy. The books do not depend on one another plot-wise. You can read each one separately, since Robinson has chosen to examine three different possible futures in the three books, all set in the same location around the same time. However the three work as a whole by offering countering futures, which highlight the values each future takes on. Having read Pacific Edge first I can confidently say that it stands on it's own in terms of plot of thematic development. The future Robinson explores here is that of an ectopia. There has been massive reforestation, pollution is way down, and prosperity is the norm. With a scenario like this you might expect an epic story, a wide ranging narrative giving the history that led to this condition or perhaps a rich description of wonders this world holds. Neither is the case. Instead the plot revolves around a community political intrigue, a love triangle or two, and the day to day life of a small number of people. It is the seemingly unambitious scope of this book that makes it succeed so brilliantly in the end. The residents of El Modena, California lead a quiet life in general. The government is a town council that runs its meetings in the style of Quaker public meetings. The main ongoing social event is the local slow pitch softball league. We are introduced to several of the people living in the town. The main character is Kevin Claiborne, a builder and member of the town council. Circulating around him are Romana Sanchez, who he falls head over heels in love with, Alfredo Blair, her ex-lover and town mayor, Tom Barnard, Kevin's grandfather, Oscar Baldarramma, the town lawyer, and several others. Robinson does a good job drawing the reader into the lives of these characters. Despite the lack of cosmic importance, we see that events which seem trivial to an outsider can be important to the people involved. Then once he has our attention, he surprises us by doing something more. Guided by a series of 50-year-old diary entries (which lead off every chapter) Robinson examines the concepts of utopia, showing that life will always go on and humans can get themselves into individual troubles, no matter how stable and prosperous the society. However it is the way the society around the troubled individuals reacts that really makes a utopia work. There is undoubtedly a political context to this story and it might be tempting, upon seeing the setup of the story as an ectopia, to dismiss Robinson as a dreaming eco-freak. This would be a great mistake because he combines an environmental world with praise of small town and family life that would seem to come straight from a Ronald Reagan campaign speech. (Although there are admittedly some differences in the family structure he outlines.) Incredibly, out of these seemingly paradoxically diverse elements he draws a convincing society. And a very thoughtful one which leaves a lot of interpretation open for the reader. No short review can do justice to the rich depth of this book. If you want wall to wall action and adventure, you won't find it here, but if you want a fascinating look at a possible future you will find it here. In comparison to the 1990 Nebula and Hugo nominees that I've read (_Tehanu_, _Fall of Hyperion_, _Earth_, _Queen of Angels_ and _The Vor Game_) _Pacific Edge_ stands up exceedingly well. In fact to my mind, it is a superior book. %A Robinson, Kim Stanley %T Pacific Edge %I Tor, A Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. Book %C New York %D November 1990 (hardback), June 1991 (paperback) %G ISBN 0-812-50056-3 %P 326 pp %S The Orange County Trilogy %V Volume 3 %O paperback $4.99 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Sun Apr 26 18:05:37 1992 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!psinntp!psinntp!uunet!think.com!ames!bionet!raven.alaska.edu!never-reply-to-path-lines From: ecl@mtgzy.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper +1 908 957 2070) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REMAKING HISTORY by Kim Stanley Robinson Message-ID: <1992Apr20.171557.25848@raven.alaska.edu> Date: 20 Apr 92 17:15:57 GMT Sender: wisner@raven.alaska.edu (Bill Wisner) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Organization: University of Alaska Computer Network Lines: 162 Approved: wisner@ims.alaska.edu REMAKING HISTORY by Kim Stanley Robinson A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1992 Evelyn C. Leeper Ghod, I love Robinson's work! Okay, everyone who was just looking for a thumbs up or down vote now knows where I stand on this collection, so I feel free to discuss the stories at somewhat greater length. REMAKING HISTORY is the title of the collection, the title of one of the stories, and the book's theme as well, with several of the stories embodying that theme. "'A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations'" (originally published in 1991), "Remaking History" (1989), "Vinland the Dream" (1991), "Muir on Shasta" (1991), and "A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions" (1991) all look backward at history, not forward to the future as SF (usually meaning "science fiction") is expected to do. Yet they're all SF ("speculative fiction") in their own way. The title story, "Remaking History," is a straightforward alternate history: what if the Iran hostage rescue had succeeded? But even here, in what is the first of these stories that Robinson wrote (or at any rate published), history is examined on multiple levels: what did happen, what might have happened, how what happened is portrayed in the media, and so on. These are ideas Robinson will return to over and over. The interlocking of events, how one thing leads to another and the slightest coincidences can change history, are themes that Robinson here begins to explore. "Muir on Shasta" would appear to be an historical fiction about John Muir. Yet Robinson gives it a mysticism in Muir's visions of past and future that makes it something more, while at the same time slipping in a subtle reminder that we are often unable to interpret correctly what we see- --how much more difficult to interpret things second-hand. "Vinland the Dream" is a perfect pairing with "Remaking History"--it's about remaking history. What if all the evidence of Norse exploration in Canada and elsewhere in North America had been faked by someone in the early 1800s? What if he *had* "remade history"? In "Vinland the Dream" some archaeologists discover the truth, making them sort of Schliemanns in reverse, turning fact into myth. What motive would the hoaxer have? Was he just a practical joker or a Norse chauvinist, or was he trying to give us dreams? In both "Vinland the Dream" and "Remaking History." Robinson looks at how our perceptions of history give direction to our lives. "A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions" is not a short story-- it's not fiction at all (though everyone seems to refer to it as such). In this essay, Robinson trys to use the conceits of physics to describe and understand history. Certainly the application of chaos theory (to which the title refers) to history is not new, but I think Robinson's use of the wave-versus-particle duality from physics to embody the Great-Man-versus- historical-materialism duality in history is a new and original approach to this ongoing debate. The only parts of "A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions" that might be construed as fiction are Robinson's many scenarios for how Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have turned out differently, and how those changes might have affected the future, and so on. The twists and turns that Robinson draws give the reader a glimpse of how complicated it all is: a writer of alternate histories can pick one scenario and make it sound reasonable, even inevitable, but Robinson shows how many different paths are possible and helps demonstrate Niven's contention that alternate history is just too easy to write. "'A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations'" puts into practice, if you will, a lot of what Robinson explores in the first three stories I mentioned. A historian is trying to put together a book that is "A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations," and as part of that is trying to make sense of the century and of the feeling of one man in 1902 who said, "I believe Man is good. I believe that we stand at the dawn of a century that will be more peaceful and prosperous than any in history." Robinson's Frank Churchill tries to reconcile that with the millions of war dead, measured--in a series of powerful images--as how many Vietnam memorials they would fill: one every six weeks for World War I (which lasted 220 weeks in all), a hundred and twenty for the Jews killed in the Holocaust, and so on. Most of Robinson's readers will remember Vietnam; this takes their image of a horrifying big war and shows them how small it was in comparison to the rest of the century. Again, our perceptions of history are shown to be flawed; our lives are shaped by myths rather than realities. Only by returning to a simpler era can Churchill find some understanding, but also some humility: we are no longer "Man," but simply "man." "The Part of Us That Loves" is an up-to-date look at the Gospel stories of Jesus's miracles in a town which seems oddly stuck in the 1950s. In spite of that (or maybe because of it--it gives the story a sort of "soft- focus" feel that reinforces the theme), Robinson conveys a strong message. What the message is--aye, there's the rub. To the mystic, it would be that the age of miracles is not past, or has come again; to the secular humanist, it may be that we make our own miracles. Given Robinson's attractions to the ambiguities of history, I don't doubt for a moment that this ambiguity is intentional. This story also marks a return to the musical theme that Robinson had in such earlier works as "In Pierson's Orchestra" and "Coming Back to Dixieland," both from the 1976 ORBIT 18. REMAKING HISTORY also contains what is described on the dust jacket as "Robinson's controversial South African sequence, 'Down and Out in the Year 2000,' 'Our Town,' 'A Transect,' and 'The Lunatics.'" What makes these a South African sequence escapes me. The first seems to be a straightforward "our cities are going to hell" look at the future--well-done, but having no discernible connection to South Africa. The second is set in Tunisia. The third is set in Montreal and South Africa through a most peculiar space- warp. But then one might expect that of a story titled "The Transect." It seemed similar in some vague undefinable way to Michael Bishop's "Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana." I doubt either copied the other; Robinson's is from 1987, Bishop's from 1990 (I believe), but it's probably one of those odd coincidences. Then again, maybe I see a resemblance where no one else does. It wouldn't be the first time. ("Mark, doesn't that look like so-and-so?" "No.") "The Lunatics" is also connected to South Africa, not by being set there, but by being a parable of what might happen there (though recent events seem to make it less likely). Robinson takes some very traditional science fiction trappings and does some very modern things with them. The five remaining stories form no special "cycle." "The Translator" is a basic science fiction tale of a human negotiating between two aliens with the "aid" of a mechanical translator. One wonders if this 1990 story didn't serve as partial inspiration for STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION's "Darmok" (first broadcast in September 1991)--both have to do with coping with languages having very different structures. ("Doesn't that look like ....?" "No.") In "Before I Wake" humanity is stricken by a malady that prevents a person from staying awake for more than a very short period at a time, and how it changes us. "Rainbow Bridge" is a coming-of-age story involving environmental concerns and Navaho mysticism. "Glacier" is a sort of slice-of-life story about the return of the glaciers; Robinson does it competently, but it has been done before. And finally, "Zurich" is about one man's (internal evidence suggests a man rather than a woman, though it is never stated) attempt to outdo the Swiss at cleanliness. But I detect in this a certain mean-spiritedness against the Swiss (as contrasted with the South American musician, for example) that makes the story almost unpleasant to read. It seems to be attacking an entire people--for being too clean, no less!--and as such not at all typical of the sensitivity and humanity most of Robinson's other works shows. In spite of this one small disappointment (even Jove nods, as they say), I *highly* recommend this collection. %B Remaking History %T "A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations" %T Remaking History %T Vinland the Dream %T Muir on Shasta %T A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions %T The Part of Us That Loves %T Down and Out in the Year 2000 %T Our Town %T A Transect %T The Lunatics %T The Translator %T Before I Wake %T Rainbow Bridge %T Glacier %T Zurich %A Kim Stanley Robinson %C New York %D December 1991 %I Tor %O hardback, US$18.95 %G ISBN 0-312-85126-X %P 274pp Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com From /tmp/sf.15692 Tue Mar 30 18:14:44 1993 Path: lysator.liu.se!isy!liuida!sunic!lunic!eru.mt.luth.se!enterpoop.mit.edu!hri.com!noc.near.net!uunet!think.com!ames!ig!dont-reply-to-paths From: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: ESCAPE FROM KATHMANDU by Kim Stanley Robinson Message-ID: <9212271326.AA10726@media.mit.edu> Date: 28 Dec 92 21:25:17 GMT Sender: mcb@presto.ig.com Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Lines: 60 Approved: mcb@presto.ig.com (temporary rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) X-Now-Playing: Silence X-Dj-In-The-House: Wex Escape from Kathmandu by Kim Stanley Robinson Review Copyright (c) 1992 Alan Wexelblat This is the first Kim Robinson book I've read. I picked it up on one of my pilgrimages to Mark Zeising's tables at ArmadilloCon, based on his recommendation. Mark has yet to steer me wrong, and this is no exception. I enjoyed "Escape..." a great deal and I'm looking forward to reading more from Robinson. Calling this book a novel is somewhat misleading. It's really a connected series of short stories -- episodes in the life of George Fergusson, the protagonist and narrator of the stories. The stories involve George and a recurring cast of weird characters and, while the stories do build on events from past episodes, they don't depend on the past episodes and do make sense taken individually. The novel begins with George alone and bored in his hotel in Kathmandu. He's a tour guide, you see, and there's not much to do in the off season. So one day, George steals a letter from the hotel's dead letter box. This letter is addressed to one George Fredericks and it's a huge thing, almost six inches thick of folded up paper. What our George reads in that letter sends him on a path into a secret world of underground governments, secret cities, and -- of course -- yetis. There's also Jimmy Carter, the King of Nepal, a crazed ex-British colonial officer and various other supporting actors. Each has a part to play in changing George Fergusson from a care-nothing, lazy tourist guide to... well, read the book for yourself and see. Robinson's strengths lie first in the setting, and second in the plots. He has been to Nepal, and his descriptions of the mountains, the countryside, and the experiences of being in, on and under them ring absolutely true. His descriptions of the mountain hikes and climbs reminded me just how much I *don't* want to do that any time soon. Reading this book left me with a real feel for the country and the people. Similarly, the plots of the episodes are well-constructed. After some initial slowness, the book moves along at a good clip. The book's major flaw is in its tone. For about the first three quarters, it is light-hearted, with lots of laughs and lots of fun. However, it takes a sudden turn for the grim in the last section. It has to do with George's development, so I won't give away the details, but suffice it to say that suddenly I found myself reading a much more serious work than before. The changeover is surprising and not very pleasant. Does that make this a bad book? No, just one by an author with not-yet- enough experience. As I mentioned at the beginning, I think Robinson is a good addition to my collection and I intend to get more of his books. But I did get quite a surprise and you should beware -- all is not fun and games in Kathmandu. %T Escape from Kathmandu %A Kim Stanley Robinson %I Tor SF Hardcover %G ISBN 0-312-93196-4 %D 1989 %O $17.95 %P 313 pp From /tmp/sf.15692 Tue Mar 30 18:17:13 1993 Xref: lysator.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:32 rec.arts.books:8811 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books Path: lysator.liu.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!Germany.EU.net!news.netmbx.de!mailgzrz.TU-Berlin.DE!math.fu-berlin.de!ira.uka.de!yale.edu!yale!mintaka.lcs.mit.edu!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu.!wex From: ecl@mtgzy.att.com (Evelyn C Leeper +1 908 957 2070) Subject: RED MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson (and also "Green Mars") Message-ID: <9301280001.AA04905@presto.ig.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Sender: news@news.media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 19:07:49 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 111 RED MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson "Green Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson Book reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1993 Evelyn C. Leeper RED MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson Kim Stanley Robinson has taken a big subject--one might almost say sprawling--the colonization and terraforming of Mars. It is so big that it needs three books, of which this is the first. But this book is independent enough to stand on its own. Robinson's works often derive from history or historical trends, and so one isn't surprised to see that outlook brought to this book. Yes, it is a book about its characters, but it is about them as shaping (and being shaped by) history. Though the plot of the space colony torn between loyalty/duty to the parent government(s) on earth and desire for their own freedom is scarcely new, Robinson lifts it above a simplistic parallel to the American Revolution or some other familiar event. It becomes its own event, similar in some ways to earlier events, different in others. He deals with the idea that the Mars colonies will be in many ways less heterogeneous than the American were, for example. In many space colonization stories, we see only the main characters, with everyone else seeming to be sheep following the leaders of various factions. In RED MARS the later colonists are not sheep to follow the "First Hundred" blindly; everyone is an individual and everyone has a point of view. The politics of the novel encompasses all the nations of Earth, not (as is all too common) merely the superpowers. The effort of the developing nations to "get their share of the pie" is one of the main forces behind much of what goes on in (and on) RED MARS. Robinson also assumes his characters know their history--discussions of terraforming Mars are not the totally technical and scientific discussions one has come to expect, but include references to projects and events which affected Earth's environment. RED MARS is an adventure story, true, but it is not a simple-minded one and there is much to chew on. It seems to be a descendent of Heinlein's THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS, only more sophisticated and writ large. More sophisticated because Heinlein stacks his deck: he doesn't give any "responsible spokespersons for the opposing view." All Heinlein's characters speak "self-evident" truths ("why should anyone trust someone else to license a doctor instead of making his own decisions?") that always work (the successful line marriages, clan marriages, and other social structures in THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTREES work because Heinlein writes them as working). Robinson, on the other hand, gives two--or rather all--reasonably balanced sides to every argument and lets the reader decide. Writ large, because Heinlein's Lunar colony is fairly small and compact while Robinson covers, if not all of Mars, certainly a substantial part. Not only are the philosophies and their expositions more sophisticated, but the style is as well. For example, Robinson's use of color is both expected and surprising. There are the Reds and the Greens, and we as readers have some already-wired reactions to those names. But here the Reds are not the Communists or even the Russians--they are the "environmentalists" who want to preserve Mars in its pristine state: red. And the Greens want to terraform Mars to serve the people--a more Marxist approach in a sense. This total reversal of expectations is just one way in which Robinson makes the reader think about his or her automatic assumptions and quick reactions to certain words or phrases. (Some of this may be from having read "Green Mars" as well; I am not absolutely sure that the Reds or the Greens are specifically named as such in RED MARS. See my review of "Green Mars" below for more details.) I definitely recommend RED MARS, and in fact intend to nominate it for a Hugo. (While the copyright date of this edition is 1993, the first publication was in Great Britain in 1992, so this book is eligible for the Hugo *this* time around.) "Green Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson People have told me that Kim Stanley Robinson has said that this will not be part of his "Mars" trilogy, but his interview in LOCUS last year says that it was certainly the first step toward writing it. Even if he does not incorporate the text into one of the three novels, "Green Mars" will clearly remain a part of the same timeline. The basic story of "Green Mars" is of a group of people climbing Olympus Mons, but the real beauty is in the filling in of detail for the world around the volcano. You are *on* Olympus Mons, but you see all of Mars, not only at this instant, but also its past and its future. Thus may sound like Jorge Luis Borges's "Aleph," so let me make clear that I am not talking about the climbers finding some magical window-- I am saying that the story is that magical window for the reader. I am sure a rock climber would appreciate the descriptions and details of the climbing itself, but even a person whose only exercise is opening the door to the library will enjoy this novella. If you are reading Robinson's "Mars" trilogy starting with RED MARS, this is a must-read as an adjunct to that. %T Red Mars %A Kim Stanley Robinson %C New York %D February 1993 %I Bantam Spectra %O trade paperback, US$11.95 [1992] %G ISBN 0-553-37134-7 %P 519pp %S Mars %V 1 %T Green Mars %A Kim Stanley Robinson %C New York %D 1988 %I Tor %O paperback, US$2.95 [1985] %G ISBN 0-812-53362-3 %P 113pp %S Mars; Tor Double %V ?; 1 Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | ecl@mtgzy.att.com From new Thu Jun 16 19:02:44 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!news.ecn.bgu.edu!psuvax1!hsdndev!rutgers!aol.com!NaKhym From: NaKhym@aol.COM Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Green Mars by K S Robinson Message-ID: <9406070729.tn913567@aol.com> Date: 7 Jun 94 11:29:58 GMT Sender: news@rutgers.rutgers.edu Lines: 38 Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson is the second installment in his Mars colonization and teraforming trilogy. The story picks up approximately one hundred years after the close of Red Mars. Several new characters, the ectogene children of Hiroko, are also introduced. I tend to disagree with the statements I've seen from other reviewers, that GM is a realistic blueprint for the teraforming of the planet Mars. The book is written in a cold style that does make it read like an engineering document. However, the time scales seem just too short for this to be an accurate picture of planetary engineering. Instead, GM does provide a reasonably broad and interesting discussion of alternative strategies for the teraformation of Mars. KSR is continuing to write a set of obsessive, cold, and some what flat characters. In RM this seemed to be done to represent the sort of obsessive over achievers that would be chosen for a Mars colony expedition. In GM, the surviving members of the First Hundred have had their life spans extended via a longevity treatment. The treatment does not work well on brain tissue, thus recipients maintain 50-80 odd years of memory. As the First Hundred are pushing 150, their memories of Earth and the events of RM have faded and are lost to many. The First Hundred then travel through the story like ghosts. Though they are central figures in leading the events of GM, in their personal lives they tend to wander in search of connections they can use to anchor themselves and each other. The two non-First Hundred characters are also disassociated, Nirgal by lost love and witness to death at a young age, and Art by divorce and near enforced transplantation to Mars by his employer. The result is a cast of characters who remain cold and distant from the reader. GM like RM is a bit over long for the material covered, partially due to frequent side tracking while the First Hundred vainly search for identity. All in all, I give the book high marks in spite of its short comings. For those who have read and enjoyed RM, GM is smoother and ore consistent read. GM also provides some extra insights into the events of RM that makes RM a little easier to swallow. My only fear is that I'll have to deal with Blue Mars next year as part of my 1995 Hugo reading. From /tmp/sf.4146 Tue Aug 9 01:43:55 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.intercon.com!udel!news.sprintlink.net!dg-rtp!sheol!dont-reply-to-paths From: aaron@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca (Humphrey Aaron V) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Prograde Reviews--Kim Stanley Robinson:Red Mars Approved: sfr%sheol@concert.net (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <94Feb21.165408-0700.138910@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca> Date: 22 Feb 94 23:12:36 GMT Lines: 52 This is a very...rich book. Well, it's definitely thick. This might be first of KSR's novels that I've read. I've read his short stories and novella in Asimov's, though. Somehow I wouldn't have picked him to write a novel like this. But having proved his talents for "soft" SF, that just makes his hard SF that much better. The technical material is flawless, or at least had few flaws I could spot. The main characters(once you figure out who they are)all live and breathe. And so does Mars. (So to speak.) One hundred colonists leave earth for Mars. The prime movers among them are John, who has wangled this spot despite having already been on the first manned mission, Frank, who has worked with John since that time, Maya, leader of the Russian contingent and the wedge that drives Frank and John apart, Arkady, the Russian rebel who says the things others dare to think, and Nadia, the pragmatic engineer who is the best at getting things done. (Apologies for the lack of surnames, but I don't have the book with me at the moment...) The colony soon divides into factions--those who want to terraform, and those who want to leave Mars untouched, for study or just out of respect for it; those who want to bring more and more people from Earth to exploit Mars' wealth of natural resources, or those who want Mars to be more than just something to be mined, more than just a property of Earth. Eventually it all comes to a head. No happy ending, though. The revolution, doomed from the start by the greater forces(and superior position)of Earth, is abortive...but the overall attitude is hopeful. KSR's projection is highly realistic, not the wish-fulfillment others might have resorted to(_The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress_, anyone?); this isn't a replay of the American revolution, by any means. Characters die, character we have grown to like. But not all of them, and some are bloody but unbowed. Extremely slow in places, but very moving. Did I hear mention that this was the start of a trilogy? %A Robinson, Kim Stanley %T Red Mars %I Bantam Spectra %C New York %D Feb. 1993 %G ISBN 0-553-37134-7 %P 519 pp. %O Trade paperback -- --Alfvaen(Editor of Communique) Current Album--Harry Connick, Jr.:We Are In Love Current Read--Michael P. Kube-McDowell:Exile "I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me." --Beck From /tmp/sf.4146 Tue Aug 9 01:46:04 1994 Xref: liuida rec.arts.sf.reviews:495 rec.arts.books:78166 alt.books.reviews:2684 Path: liuida!sunic!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!udel!news.sprintlink.net!dg-rtp!sheol!dont-reply-to-paths From: Evelyn.Chimelis.Leeper@att.com () Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books,alt.books.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: GREEN MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson Approved: sfr%sheol@concert.net (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <9403031236.ZM400@mtgpfs1.mt.att.com> Date: 04 Mar 94 03:37:16 GMT Lines: 78 GREEN MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson Bantam Spectra, ISBN 0-553-37335-8, 1994, 535pp, US$12.95. A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1994 Evelyn C. Leeper This is the second book of Robinson's "Mars" trilogy. The first was last year's Hugo-nominated RED MARS, and the series will be finished with the upcoming BLUE MARS. (I should mention again that while Robinson's novella "Green Mars" appears to take place in the same future history as this series, it is not a part of this novel.) GREEN MARS, it must be said, suffers from the same flaws and difficulties as most middle-of-a-trilogy novels. It does not start at the beginning, nor does it go through to the end. While RED MARS can be read as a stand-alone novel, GREEN MARS cannot. You must know what happened in RED MARS for GREEN MARS to make any sense or have any meaning. (I would really have appreciated a brief glossary of major characters and political groups- -my memory of the details of RED MARS has faded over the intervening year.) There is also (to my tastes) far too much technical discussion of terraforming and areology, particularly in the first half of the book. For example, on page 148 Robinson writes: "The surface of the glacier appeared to be extremely broken, as the literature had suggested--mixed with regolith during the flooding, and shot through with trapped carbonation bubbles. Rocks and boulders caught on the surface had melted the ice underneath them and then it had refrozen around them, in a daily cycle that had left them all about two-thirds submerged. All the seracs, standing above the surface of the glacier like titanic dolmens, were on close inspection found to be deeply pitted." (By the way, a regolith is a layer of loose rock material resting on bedrock, a serac is a large mass of ice broken off the main body of a glacier and remaining behind in a crevasse after glacial movement or melting, and a dolmen is a prehistoric megalithic [large stone] structure consisting of two or more upright stones with a capstone, typically forming a chamber (which doesn't actually sound like what the seracs would look like, but what the heck). All definitions courtesy of the AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY.) I could be wrong, but I also think that the discussions on pages 175 through 187 and elsewhere of the poisonousness effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are confusing it with carbon monoxide. While inhaling large amounts of carbon dioxide can cause death by suffocation, it is not poisonous in the usual sense of the word, and it is not clear to me that in an atmosphere with a certain percentage of oxygen it matters whether the remainder is nitrogen or carbon dioxide, at least as far as human respiration goes. (Though the atmospheric pressure would be important-- consider the possible side-effects of nitrogen to deep-sea divers.) This may all seem terrible technical and nit-picky, but the book lends itself to that so well that is should be somewhat expected. It is only in the second half of GREEN MARS that Robinson returns in force to the political and historical aspects of the series. While one may argue that he key event that triggers the "phase change" of GREEN MAR's final chapter is totally arbitrary, there's no denying that historical triggers often are. Still, I have to reserve final judgement on GREEN MARS until BLUE MARS concludes the series, and then see if GREEN MARS serves its purpose in the overall picture. That is the only way to view this book and much as I want to see Kim Stanley Robinson finally get a Hugo, it makes no sense to look at this as a possibility. (I mention this because this had a British edition in 1993, and hence would be eligible for the Hugo awards for last year, to be given at Conadian this September. I note this just to clarify its eligibility for anyone who does want to nominate it.) %T Green Mars %A Kim Stanley Robinson %C New York %D March 15, 1994 %I Bantam Spectra %O hardback, US$22.95/trade paperback, US$12.95 %G ISBN 0-553-09640-0/ISBN 0-553-37335-8 %P 535pp %S Mars %V 2 -- Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | ecl@mtgpfs1.att.com / Evelyn.Leeper@att.com "Remember, high-tech means breaks down next week, while cutting edge means breaks down this afternoon. -Bruce Sterling From /tmp/sf.4146 Tue Aug 9 02:04:16 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!ugle.unit.no!trane.uninett.no!eunet.no!nuug!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: troly@math.ucla.edu (Bret Jolly) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: _Red Mars_ by Kim Stanley Robinson Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 24 May 1994 08:16:03 GMT Organization: UCLA Mathematics Department Lines: 125 Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <1994May22.182705.4635@math.ucla.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu Originator: mcb@remarque.berkeley.edu Review: Red Mars The front matter of this book contains three pages of praise from various reviewers. Gregory Benford says: If you're looking for a scientifically sophisticated story, told with enormity[!] and grace, here it is. It does indeed have an enormity rivaling Judith Merril's infamous lunar helicopter. Some characters set off across the unterraformed Mars in a dirigible loaded with windmills! Here is KSR's description: Their dirigible was the biggest ever made, a planetary model [?] built back in Germany by Friedrichshafen Noch Einmal, and shipped up in 2029, so that it had just recently arrived. It was called the _Arrowhead_, and it measured 120 meters across the wings, a hundred meters from front to back, and forty meters tall. It had an internal ultralite frame, and turboprops at each wingtip and under the gondola; these were driven by small plastic engines whose batteries were powered by solar cells arrayed on the upper surface of the bag. The pencil-shaped gondola extended most of the length of the underside, because most of it was temporarily filled with their cargo of windmills [...] Ignoring KSR's peculiar notion of what a turboprop is, where was he that day in grade school when they explained the law of buoyancy? Evidently he was troubled by his intuition here, because he added an `explanation' a few paragraphs later. It was remarkable, in fact, that they had not done anything like this before. But flying on Mars was no easy thing, because of the thin atmosphere. They were in the best solution: a dirigible as big and light as possible, filled with hydrogen, which in Martian air was not only not flammable, but also even lighter relative to its surroundings than it would have been on Earth. Hydrogen and the latest in superlite materials gave them a lift to carry a cargo like their windmills, but with such a cargo aboard they were ludicrously sluggish. We are all abysmally ignorant about some things, but should anyone this ignorant of science be writing ultrahard saifai? And what of the editors who let this slip by? Did they all skip class on that same fateful day in grade school? Well, you say, what of the rest of the book? After all, if we demanded that our ultrahard-saifai writers had a good general knowledge of science, we wouldn't have much to read. Unfortunately, and despite its Nebula award, this book is a thoroughbred turkey. KSR has written some admirable stories, but I felt embarrassed for him all through this book. It's a shame too, because he was clearly trying hard. I could imagine him at his word processor, surrounded by stacks of NASA SPs. But he has no idea of what is technologically plausible. For example, when the 100 colonists arrive on Mars in 2027 they get their water by *extracting it from the atmosphere*. A ways into the colonization, Mars is flooded with immigrants, mainly from backward countries who are trying to relieve their population pressures. Did KSR think about this for five minutes? While the 100 colonists are colonizing Mars, their biologists discover the secret of immortality in their spare time. KSR can create vivid, believable characters when he wants to (as in _The Gold Coast_) but he didn't do it here. Throughout the book the characters give the impression that they are doing things not because they want to, but because the author told them to. The most appalling example of this is a mild spoiler, so I save it to the end after a spoiler warning and some control-Ls. A comparison with Pamela Sargent's Venus books forced itself upon me. Sargent wrote a saga of the terraforming of Venus, where KSR is writing a saga of the terraforming of Mars. Sargent is not that much more knowledgeable than KSR, and when she figured out that terraforming Venus was much harder than she'd thought at first, she fell back on anti-gravity machines which marred a would-be ultrahard saifai. Nonetheless, Sargent's saga is much better than KSR's. This is partly because her characters are more interesting and believable, but largely because her future world is better thought out and much more interesting than KSR's. The earthbound part of KSR's future is pretty much boring extrapolation. Sargent's future is exotic and strange. Sargent's future has a sensawunda that KSR's lacks. _Red Mars_ does have some interesting ideas in it, but these are all to be found, to much better effect, in his excellent novelette _Green Mars_, which has appeared in a Tor double. This novelette should not be confused with the *novel* _Green Mars_, which is a sequel to _Red Mars_ and which is to be followed by _Blue Mars_. (Librarians everywhere will curse KSR's name for this!) KSR has decided to expand an excellent novelette into a bloated and stupid trilogy. This was a good business decision on his part, but a sad decision from the viewpoint of those who love good saifai. %A Robinson, Kim Stanley %T Red Mars %I Bantam Spectra %C New York %D February 1993 (paperback November 1993) %G ISBN 0-553-56073-5 %P 572pp %O paperback USD5.99, also in hardback and trade ppb. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MILD SPOILER WARNING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! When the original 100 colonists arrived at Mars, a group of political utopians split off and colonized Phobos. Near the end of the book it is revealed that, in their first year on Phobos, the utopians hollowed it out and secretly turned it into a giant rocket. Ignoring the problem of how they did this, *why* they did this remains a mystery. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Jun 13 12:36:08 1996 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!solace!nntp.uio.no!Norway.EU.net!EU.net!sun4nl!surfnet.nl!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.kei.com!uhog.mit.edu!news!news From: ecl@mtcts1.mt.lucent.com Subject: Review: BLUE MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Keywords: author=Evelyn C. Leeper Lines: 63 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu (Graystreak) Organization: Intelligent Agents Group X-Newsreader: (ding) Gnus v0.94 Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 20:33:58 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Lines: 63 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:982 rec.arts.books.reviews:1736 [this review covers the third book in the trilogy. There are no explicit spoilers, but people who have not read the first two volumes should still be aware.] BLUE MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1996 Evelyn C. Leeper Well, Kim Stanley Robinson has finally finished his Mars trilogy and, while it may be heresy to say this, I'm glad it's over. It is possible that if I had read the whole trilogy at one time, I might have enjoyed the third book more, but the fact is that finishing it was more a chore than a pleasure. Maybe it's just my reaction to massive multi-volume series that take years to finish. Orson Scott Card took so long for his latest Alvin book to come out that I had completely lost interest. The current Turtledove World War series is another one that started out good, but two years later is bogging down, as I try to reconstruct enough of the earlier books to have the current one mean something. And even Robinson, whose work I generally love, cannot overcome this problem. In the first book, RED MARS, Robinson sets the stage, introduces the characters, and gives us a clear picture of what is happening. Though obviously there was room for a sequel, the book did stand on its own. In GREEN MARS he continues the story, with even more emphasis on the technical aspects. But because it was a continuation, GREEN MARS did not stand on its own, having no real beginning and no real end in itself. In spite of this, it won a Hugo. I was happy to see Robinson win a Hugo -- I just wish it had been for one of his other works. Now in BLUE MARS we have an end. There is, of course, always room for a sequel set on "blue Mars," but it is not necessary and I doubt Robinson will write one. However, we still have no beginning per se. We also have tons more technical areological and terraforming discussions and explications, and some characterization, mostly to wrap up the stories of the people we have been following throughout. With all this technical detail, it's almost inevitable there will be slip-ups. For example, "Hindu" is not a language [page 406]. I wanted to like this book. But I have to say it was too much of a good thing, too stretched out. I'm not even sure why I am saying this. People who read the first two will probably read this one for a sense of closure in any case, and people who didn't probably wouldn't read this anyway. I suppose if you want to read the entire trilogy through you will appreciate this more, but that's not likely to encompass a large number of readers. %T Blue Mars %A Kim Stanley Robinson %C New York %D July 1996 %I Bantam Spectra %O hardback, US$22.95 %G ISBN 0-553-10144-7 %P 624pp %S Mars %V 3 Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | eleeper@lucent.com "The tendency toward good in human nature has a force which no creed can utterly counteract, and which insures the ultimate triumph of that tendency over all dogmatic perversions." --George Eliot, "Evangelical Teaching" From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Jul 16 13:29:45 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!news.solace.mh.se!news.ecn.ou.edu!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!netnews.com!ai-lab!news.media.mit.edu!not-for-mail From: lichter@ucla.edu (Michael Lichter) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: ICEHENGE by Kim Stanley Robinson Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 15 Jul 1998 15:02:29 -0400 Organization: UCLA Department of Sociology Lines: 84 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2014 ICEHENGE by Kim Stanley Robinson Orb, ISBN 0-312-86609-7, 1998, 287pp, US$13.95 Review Copyright 1998 Michael I. Lichter Emma Weil senses that something strange is happening on the RUST EAGLE during what should be a routine mining tour of the asteroid belt. Her fellow crew members are having urgent, whispered conversations that cease whenever she comes near. All she hears are whispers of mutiny and loud denials that anything is happening. At the same time, ominous news comes from Mars, her home: it appears that an armed struggle for Martian independence is about to break out. When the mutiny and the war come to pass, Emma will be forced decide which side she is on. And that is only the beginning. Originally published in 1984 (based partly on stories printed in 1980 and 1982), ICEHENGE will seem eerily familiar to readers of Robinson's more recent Mars Trilogy. The background is much the same: Mars has been colonized under the supervision of enormous corporations and powerful Earthly governments. The dictatorial Committee rules without the consent of Mars' (human) natives, supervising the development and terraforming of the red planet. A combination of American and Soviet ideals unite the Martians, who are then met with ruthless, bloody repression. Despite the similarities, however, ICEHENGE represents an alternate history of Mars and Earth, one in which the Soviet Union never collapsed, in which the Martian Reds never emerged, and in which terraforming proceeded much more slowly. As in the Mars Trilogy, a new gerontological process that prolongs human lifetimes by hundreds of years is central to the story. Fewer than 100 years of life pass before memory begins to fade and one's own past becomes something known only through official records and personal journals. The lines between memory and fiction, history and biography blur. Ironically, in this future eye-witness accounts of historical events are lost not because of a lack of eye-witnesses, but because personal experience is no longer credible. In the second of ICEHENGE's three sections, Hjalmar Nederland, a senior Martian archaeologist begins a dig at one of the domed cities destroyed in the revolution, three centuries in the past. Mars' official history says that there was no organized revolutionary movement, only rioting, and that those who died at the time died at the hands of the rioters. Nederland believes differently. During his search for evidence, news arrives that an artificial structure has been discovered on Pluto, a vast ice sculpture that is dubbed "Icehenge." When Nederland uncovers Emma Weil's journal, he believes he has found both the truth about the revolution and the story of Icehenge's origin. Despite Nederland's impressive evidence-gathering and his stodgy insistence that his answers are correct, young Edmond Doya believes otherwise. The final section of ICEHENGE is devoted to Doya's fascination with Icehenge and his heroic attempt to solve the riddle of its existence. Was it aliens? Martian revolutionaries? A contemporary prankster? Doya hopes that his journey to Pluto will uncover the indisputable facts. Unlike the Mars Trilogy, where Robinson's central concerns are political and ecological, in ICEHENGE pride of place goes to the human construction of historical truth. Nederland and Doya fight political watchdogs, the academic establishment, and eventually each other over the content and meaning of the past; Emma Weil *is* the past (or is she?). Since academics are often portrayed in SF as either pompous buffoons or absolute geniuses, Robinson's textured depiction of the social process of knowledge construction is very welcome. As (almost) always, Robinson's attention to detail, especially to the details of setting and character, make his storytelling vivid and credible. At times in the Mars Trilogy Robinson seems absolutely obsessed with the minutiae of Martian geography; fortunately, he does not get so carried away in this book. If you are a fan of his, you will not regret paying the price of this trade reissue. I doubt it will be coming out in mass paperback form. If you have not read Robinson before, this is not a bad introduction, especially since it's short! Check it out. %T Icehenge %A Kim Stanley Robinson %C New York %D July 1998 %I Orb %O trade paperback, US$13.95 %G ISBN 0-312-86609-7 %P 287pp Michael I. Lichter, ABD UCLA Department of Sociology / Center for the Study of Urban Poverty From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 10 12:39:25 1998 From: "Evelyn C Leeper" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: ANTARCTICA by Kim Stanley Robinson Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 27 Jul 1998 15:34:11 -0400 Organization: none Lines: 50 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!grendel.df.lth.se!news.ind.mh.se!news.solace.mh.se!news.xinit.se!nntp.se.dataphone.net!newsfeed.online.no!uninett.no!news.maxwell.syr.edu!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!usenet Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2057 ANTARCTICA by Kim Stanley Robinson Bantam, ISBN 0-553-10063-7, 1998, 508pp, US$24.95 A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1998 Evelyn C. Leeper Robinson is certainly best known for his "Mars" series (RED MARS, GREEN MARS, BLUE MARS). ANTARTICA reads like WHITE MARS. It has what seemed like even more expository lumps, nay, expository *mountains*, about geology et al. The only hint that this attempt to get us all to live a more ecologically sustainable lifestyle might not be paradisical is a passing reference to three attempts at single-child families in China, a plan that sounds good in theory but has turned out to be quite otherwise in practice. Robinson's character who refers to this seems to think it was a good thing; Robinson's opinion is of course unknown. If Robinson is not the leading "ecological science fiction" writer these days, I must be really out of touch with the field. But even though I agree with his goals, or what I think his goals are, I am starting to find his didacticism wearing. To be fair, he does not draw obvious villains, intent on killing all the whales or some such and hang the consequences. But the parade of scientists and just plain folks who get to stand up and "speechify" about their philosophies is not what I am looking for in a novel. The most interesting part of ANTARTICA, in fact, was the recounting of the early exploration of the continent and the people involved in that. Here Robinson's long expository passages didn't bother me, maybe because the explorers had more personality than mountains and glaciers. At least with them I felt I was reading a story rather than a textbook. If you liked the "Mars" trilogy, you will almost definitely like ANTARTICA. But if you preferred the sparser, earlier Robinson, and were hoping for a return to that style, this will be a disappointment. [Though the copyright date listed in the book is 1998, the book was actually published in Britain in 1997.] %T Antarctica %A Kim Stanley Robinson %C New York %D July 1998 %I Bantam %O hardback, US$24.95 %G ISBN 0-553-10063-7 %P 508pp Evelyn C. Leeper | eleeper@lucent.com +1 732 957 2070 | http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824 "That's how things are--you open the door to a possibility and the next thing you know, an actuality has you by the throat." --Russell Hoban